Dashboard - Port Approach Monitoring

24.08.2012

As shipowner/shipagent, you are always looking for an optimal performance of your entire fleet, especially while approaching, entering and leaving a port. Arrivals and departures of seagoing vessels in ports depend on a variety of actors resulting in a more or less chaotic situation.

Royal Dirkzwager has identified no less than 16 prominent actors that influence timing and planning of ships moving in and out the port of Rotterdam, such as pilot availability, tug availability, berth availability, obstructions, weather conditions etc. When these actors are not carefully and coherently interpreted and planned the result is sub optimal port entry and departure and therefore increasing costs.

With the brand new Dashboard application Dirkzwager creates a solution, providing a complete overview of circumstances around the arrival or departure time of a vessel. Because Dirkzwager has an overview of all approaching vessels and active actors, Dirkzwager can tune the optimal arrival/departure time of the vessel, thus decreasing delays.

The Dashboard application is developed for ship owners, shipping agents and terminals and shows competing traffic around arrival/departure time as well as an estimated load on service suppliers. This is based on weather conditions, statistical information and modeled using system dynamics.

Although the first version of the Dashboard takes only a limited number of actors into account, the added value of the information is already clear and used by several shipping agents and ship owners active in the Port of Rotterdam. Next versions of the Dashboard will add the influence of more and more actors resulting in an increased reliability and predictability of the application.

Depending on the actual situation in the port, vessels can reduce costs by ‘slow steaming’ when delays become obvious or by reduced port stay when optimal entry and departure of the vessel is achieved. With operational costs of € 10.000 to € 50.000 per hour and rising fuel costs, the beneficial effects of the Dashboard are obvious.

The service is now available for the port of Rotterdam and due course also for other North West European Mainports.